I’ve read this bit by ESPN Legal Analyst Lester Munson three times and I still can’t figure out his argument.

“The Bowl Championship Series obviously is a monopoly. It has total control over the market for a college football championship. As a monopoly, it is vunerable, very vunerable (sic) to this kind of anti-trust attack. If somebody, somewhere were to file the lawsuit, it would be an easy win and it would be the end of the Bowl Championship Series.”

First off, the BCS doesn’t have total control. There’s nothing stopping a bunch of schools from running out there right now and starting a new association with its own postseason and championship. Nothing.

But here’s what I really don’t understand. Let’s say for the sake of argument that he’s right and the BCS has that control. How is that different from any other sport? Major League Baseball controls that sport’s championship through the World Series, the NFL does it with the Super Bowl, et cetera, et cetera. Seriously, what am I missing here?

It’s pretty amusing, really. College presidents wring their hands and whine about the laws of supply and demand when it comes to the dollars of college athletics. Meanwhile, the athletic directors they employ who live with those same laws don’t whine. They adapt.

So here’s a question for you realists out there. What would you expect to happen in a world where the cost of scheduling home football games with mid-major schools has steadily spiraled upwards and the NCAA enacted a rule change which allowed FBS (formerly Division I) teams to count a victory over a FCS (formerly Division IAA) team toward bowl eligibility every year, not just once every four years?

If you answered that the big schools would start shopping at different bakeries, you’d be right.